Travelling to a Distant Earth-like Planet

Astronomers have discovered a planet nearly the size of Earth, where water might exist as a life-giving liquid.  Known officially as Kepler-186f, the planet is the outermost of five Earth-size planets orbiting in that star's solar system.  Given its small size, the researchers believe that Kepler-186f is most likely a rocky planet.  The planet cannot been seen directly, but was detected by measuring the periodic dip in light as it passes in front of its star.

It will take 459 light years to travel to Kepler-186f, the planet around a relatively small, cool, reddish star in the constellation Cygnus.  Kepler-186f is the ninth potentially habitable planet that was confirmed recently, but this one is the first so close in size to Earth that is located within its star's so-called habitable zone, where it receives the right amount of solar radiation so that water there wouldn't boil or freeze.

Once the stuff of science fiction, such habitable planets may be common in the cosmos with as many as 40 billion Earth-like planets in our Milky Way.

The Cosmic Odyssey has started.